Shortly after WWII, a guy named Art Lacey went to Kansas to buy a surplus B-17.
His idea was to fly it back to Oregon, jack it up in the air and make a gas station
out of it. He paid $15,000 for it. He asked which one was his and they said take
whichever you want because there were miles of them. He didn't know how to
fly a 4-engine airplane so he read the manual while he taxied around by himself.
They said he couldn't take off alone so he put a mannequin in the co-pilot's seat
and off he went.
He flew around a bit to get the feel of it and when he went to land he realized he
needed a co-pilot to lower the landing gear. He crashed and totaled his plane and
another on one the ground. They wrote them both off as "wind damaged" and
told him to pick out another. He talked a friend into being his co-pilot
and off they went.
They flew to Palm Springs where Lacey wrote a hot check for gas. Then they
headed for Oregon. They hit a snow storm and couldn't find their way, so they
went down below 1,000 feet and followed the railroad tracks. His partner sat in
the nose section and would yell, "TUNNEL" when he saw one and Lacey would
climb over the mountain.
They landed safely, he made good the hot check he wrote, and they started
getting permits to move a B-17 on the state highway. The highway department
repeatedly denied his permit and fought him tooth and nail for a long time, so late
one Saturday night, he just moved it himself.
He got a $10 ticket from the police for
having too wide a load.
And that's the rest of the story.
G'Day...Rob
